


Recovery

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-10
Updated: 2011-09-10
Packaged: 2017-10-23 14:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/251558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your name is Problem Sleuth, and you are just trying to get home. You're bandaged up and beaten, and the last thing you need is some asshole holding you up in a back alley.</p><p>So of course, some asshole decides to hold you up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know it was like National Kissing Day or something, somewhere. Sannam drew this (http://sannam.tumblr.com/post/10000075738/what-the-heck-national-kissing-day-again-but) and I said I'd write a thing to go with it. It's a day late but I hope that's cool anyhow.

You've only been out of the hospital for a day when you get ambushed in a back alley. Bed is unthinkably boring, so you went out to get something to wash down your painkillers with. All you've got in the house are soup cans and whiskey, and after last night you're not going to wash down your pills with booze again. So you staggered out to the store, arm curled protectively around what until recently was a hole in your chest, bought a bottle of some sort of juice that's probably good for you, a pack of smokes for later, and a newspaper. You got them all packed in a bag and walked home trying not to look too much like an easy victim even though you know one punch to the gut will probably take you out for good.

The walk home is usually five minutes and takes you fifteen, and you're one street away from home when you decide to cut through the alley rather than keep to the sidewalk, because you are getting seriously woozy. Your head is spinning enough that you might have walked right by the guy, but you prefer to think he was following you, and stealthily at that. At any rate, something cold enough to be felt through your shirt and trench coat suddenly makes itself known to your shoulder blade, and a wry, dark voice slices through the alleyway.

"Where ya headed, bud?" comes the voice, filtering into your dizzy brain. You lurch to a halt, closing your eyes in pain and exasperation, and stay where you are. Your hand was already in your jacket, clenching your side, so it's not a long way to your holster. Your fingers barely brush it the pistol grip when the voice comes again and the heavy something poking you in the back prods you. Your eyes flash open involuntarily and you breathe deep to suppress the nausea that wells up in your stomach and throat.

"Easy there," says the guy. "Just keep your hands where I can see 'em. And turn around real slow."

You'd roll your eyes if you wouldn't pass out from the dizziness. But you do turn, slow, with your hand out of your coat, just warily held in front of you in case you decide to take another beating or two in this back alley all of twenty feet from your home.

Silhoutted in the light from each end of the alley is a short figure, skinny and sharp, holding the foot of a cast-iron cane towards you. He presses it into your chest in the v your loose shirt makes, above where the bandages end, and it feels like it burns a cold hole there. You're not quick enough to stop it.

"Whew," he says, regaining half of his usual smirk. "I was worried for a minute you lost the other arm."

You let him push you into the alley wall and stay skewered between the brick and the beating you're still not sure won't be coming your way. "Still pretty much in one piece," you say. "Not entirely turned into Swiss cheese this time."

"Bastards," mutters the figure, and steps forward. Light races over sharp cheekbones and a sharper, unshaven jaw, tense shoulders and a hat capping uncontrollable hair. Slick, of course, but for a couple minutes, you hadn't been sure. "You should've seen Quarters when we finished with him. Boxcars bent his fucking gun into a pretzel and Droog made him eat it."

"And you?" you ask. You don't remember so much out of that last fight at Felt Manor. Really it was only because Quarters was covering the rest of the Felt's escape that you only took two bullets. Only took two bullets, you think, like you've taken a lot more than that and lived to talk about it.

"I was kind of occupied dragging your sorry ass out of that hellhole," he says. "I went back after I threw you down the hill to the docs, but the place was empty. Way to make me miss a good fight with your stupid bleeding. I bet you didn't even need stitches."

"Next time bring a band-aid," you reply, but your heart isn't in it. Slick said he left you there, but through all your pain-filled bleary memories, you could always catch him there in a corner, lurking and watching and once with a doctor's lapel gripped in his hand and his teeth bared. You don't draw attention to it, though. If Slick wants to pretend he doesn't care, that's fine with you. You're too busy trying not to pass out from this much time standing up.

He's saying something probably kind of clever in response, but words are suddenly muted and the alleyway is a lot darker, and then you blink and Slick is under your arm, cursing creatively and bent under your weight. His voice rushes in to fill the silence like somebody turned the volume on.

"-sure you didn't eat the hospital out of house and fucking home because I swear you didn't weigh this much when I had to carry you there myself-"

"Uhrrrm," you say, instead of a clever comeback, because you had one formulated and everything but your mouth just didn't want to cooperate.

"You're back already?" says Slick. "How about you try standing on your own, freeloader."

You do, but not well, and Slick ends up supporting you the excruciatingly long twenty feet to your door, and then you accidentally shoot the doorknob off when you fumble your keys. Slick retrieves it and adds it to the pile of mangled doorknobs overflowing the trash can inside the door. You drop your bag and shuck out of your coat, hat, shirt, shoes. You're not sure where everything falls; your steadily-narrowing vision is locked on your bed and dammit, you're going to get there. You'll clean up everything later, because Slick is invariably incapable of cleaning anything.

You collapse into bed, blessed blessed bed, and already feel a lot better. You can see why the docs recommended bed rest over passing out in back alleys. You lie there on your good side for a few minutes before you roll onto your back and find Slick leaning against your doorframe watching you. "Real bad?" he asks.

"Just fine," you say, and he takes it as an invitation and stretches himself across your bed with you.

"Can I ask why the fuck you were out walking if you're this messed-up?" His voice is quiet; in lower ranges it loses most of the harshness.

"Bed's boring," you complain, and you can't say anything else because he's suddenly on top of you, suspending himself with one arm over you, away from your bandaged chest. His mouth finds yours, and the kiss is almost unrecognizable as Slick's, it's so soft. There's something needy in it too, but he lays off the teeth for once and doesn't seem like he's trying to wrestle you into submission. He just kisses you, quiet and desperate, and you let him, because you don't really have enough energy to kiss back. The fingers of his free hand touch your face, your arm, wrap delicately around your wrist in a ghost of his usual games.

It's heady and beautiful and almost impossibly un-Slick-like.

After a long time he pauses as you catch your breath, looking down at you with his hands on either side of your head. His voice is darker than usual and very low. "I thought you were gone, you know," he says, his mouth twisted up. "I thought they'd-"

"You can kiss me again," you say to cut him off, and for once Slick listens to you. He's back on you again like you're his air. One of his hands settles on your throat, but gently, in that same faint remembrance of what usually happens. He just keeps it there, and kisses you.

Bed is not so boring after that.

"You're recovering astonishingly fast," says the doc when you check in the next week.

"Gotta get back on top," you tell him, and that pretty much sums it all up.


End file.
